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In an ordinary three-dimensional crystalline electrical insulator, heat is carried mainly by phonons. Kinetic theory gives the estimatewhere $c_V$ is heat capacity per unit volume, $v_s$ is a typical sound speed, and $\ell$ is the phonon mean free path. The thermal conductivity $\kappa$ has units $\mathrm{W}{\mathrm{m}}^{-1}{\mathrm{K}}^{-1}$.

At low temperature, $T\ll {\Theta }_D$, the Debye model gives $c_V\propto T^3$. With phonon-phonon collisions frozen out, diffuse scattering at the sample boundaries makes $\ell$ approximately constant, and $v_s$ is nearly constant. HenceAt high temperature, of order or above the Debye temperature, the Dulong-Petit law makes $c_V$ approximately constant. Anharmonic phonon scattering, especially resistive Umklapp scattering, has a collision rate approximately proportional to $T$. Thus $\ell \propto T^{-1}$ andThese two regimes usually give an intermediate maximum of thermal conductivity. The assumptions matter: glassy materials, strong defects or specular boundary reflection can change the low-temperature law; these are not universal laws for every electrical insulator.

Phonon scattering changes the occupation or propagation of lattice-vibration normal modes through interactions with boundaries, defects or other phonons. Anharmonic terms permit phonon-phonon scattering. Different processes need not relax heat flow equally: normal processes conserve total crystal momentum within the first Brillouin zone, whereas Umklapp scattering changes its representative by a nonzero reciprocal lattice vector.